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Convict, but Don't Remove, Clinton

Updated Jan. 29, 1999 12:01 a.m. ET

By Douglas W. Kmiec, a professor of constitutional law at Pepperdine University. He served as an assistant attorney general in the Reagan administration and is co-author, with Stephen B. Presser, of "The American Constitutional Order" (Anderson, 1998).

U ntil now, it has been common constitutional wisdom that impeachment and conviction demand removal--an assumed fact putting the Republicans at odds with upward of 60% of the American people and driving Democrats like Sen. Dianne Feinstein to circulate constitutionally...